TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

So, it's the season for nostalgic looking-back, so I wonder if anyone would like to join me in looking back a few decades to where it all began for me, concentrating on those bands that are no longer with us. I'll start off with a couple of favourites:
Eavesdropper - folk-rock with the ultimate oomph-factor ... never before or since have keyboards plus mandolin been used to greater effect. Only managed one album, "The March Hare".
Pyewackett - almost the polar opposite of the above, ie quite a delicate sound with hammer dulcimer, violin and bassoon to the fore. Londoners could often catch them for free in the foyer of the National Theatre. Four albums, with "The Man in the Moon Drinks Claret" being the classic.
 

70's for me .  loved the brief rise and short career of Dr Cosgill . Absolutely excellent medieval rock.

Loved their live gig at Rochester Castle.

They could have been very , very popular , don't know what happened to them.

I've heard of one of the bands mentioned but heard nothing by any of them!It has to be nineties for me with The Tansads and Whiskey Priests. Although the sixties had Eclection and the seventies String Driven Thing.

Doctors Of Madness for me, although boarding the 80's.

Didn't The Tansads become Merry Hell? I'm sure I read a fine book at the time about their troubled life?  

This is Pop by Ed Jones. I've got it, great read. Five from Merry Hell were in the band.

Clannad,who made Cropredy history at the time by appearing in two consecutive years.

Did they?  I was at every festival from 1979-2002 and have never seen Clannad (regrettably)

As of yesterday there were a handful of tickets left for Clannad's final farewell gig in Dublin in February,  postponed from December due to the death of Noel Duggan (Cropredy was the penultimate one). I thought about it but then reckoned I'd be happy with the memory of them at Cropredy.

http://Ticketmaster.ie

I didn't mean to imply that I thought that the 80's was the best decade for folk-rock - but rather I wanted to give credit to those musicians who ploughed the folk-rock furrow at that time, when the genre was deeply unfashionable ... unlike today when I am pleased to say that it has "all come round again"  :)    But, yes, as stated above, Clannad (and Runrig, Capercaillie etc) were very popular in the 80's, so it seems that for some reason the Celtic bands could achieve mass acceptability but that English bands could not do so. I remember Pyewackett saying that they had made a bid to do the background music for the ITV series "Robin of Sherwood" - and of course they would have been more appropriate being English rather than Irish - but that Clannad beat them to it.

 

Sorry. I meant to type Clarion.

How could I forget Runrig! Saw them loads of times with Donny. Almost made you want to be Scottish!

I saw them a few times in the 80s and 90s which was about as close to Scottish folk music as I got in those days. Then in the late 90s I discovered bands like Drop the Box and Rock Salt and Nails. Not sure what happened to anyone in those bands apart from Inge Thomson who has become a regular contributor to Karine Polwart's music.

Runrig were fantastic, especially live, for a number of years, but I am afraid they get my vote for most abrupt fall from grace for any band when they went from being a folk-rock band to being a stadium-rock band at the time of The Big Wheel album. Needless to say, that was the one that brought them the highest sales ...

They probably only played Scottish stadia. I never saw them in one!

Doctors of Madness? More of a Bowie/Reed/VU/glam/punk vibe, I'd have said. But bloody good!

I saw them at Murrayfield stadium but that was when they supported U2 on the Joshua Tree tour. I seem to remember they were a last-minute addition to the line-up, the other bands that day being Love and Money, The Mission and The Pogues.

Looking on setlist.fm Runrig had a big following in Denmark and Germany while in England they played venues like Manchester's Bridgewater Hall and Brum's Symphony Hall. Similar venues to where The Proclaimers play these days.

Canadian band Great Big Sea were a fave, Oysters were at their best as well.

DW

Great Big Sea were 1990's onwards, first album was 1993